Jordan Davis, 17, and some other teens were sitting in a SUV in a parking lot when Dunn parked next to them and asked the youths to turn down their music.

Jordan Davis and Dunn argued over the music, then Dunn, who is a gun collector, pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, hitting Jordan twice, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

Jordan Davis’ father Ron Davis said his unarmed son died in the arms of a friend in the SUV.

Dunn and his girlfriend took off, but witnesses wrote down their license plate number, according to the police.

The couple was staying in a Jacksonville hotel when they heard a news report Saturday morning about the shooting, so they drove home to Satellite Beach, Florida.

Dunn was arrested at his home on Saturday and charged with murder and attempted murder. He is being held without bail.

Because this occurred in Florida, we can expect another round of likely unfruitful discussions about the “stand your ground” laws that were at issue in the Trayvon Martin case. There will be handwringing and a public outcry, but nothing will be done, ultimately, because the ALEC-sponsored gun laws in this country are just fine, and if black kids don’t want to get shot for wearing a hoodie, or playing loud music, then that’s just too damn bad. They should stay home.

How many will be accused of “playing the race card” by pointing out that young black men are gunned down at an alarming rate in a country that likes to pretend it is post-racial because we have a black president?

“I don’t know if, at the time, he knew he had struck anyone in the vehicle, but the next morning, when they woke up in the hotel and saw the news that someone was killed, that’s when they got in the car and fled back to Brevard,” said Lt. Rob Schoonover, with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

The Trayvon case is completely different. What I just read could not be defended in Florida as “stand your ground”. It is just murder. Trayvon was also murdered, but there are arguments that need to be debated about when we want children to be murdered: I think in Florida the people want our children to be murdered in cases of skittles. I don’t think the case you are highlighting is similar. The shooter is going to hell and jail.

I can’t even find the words. Nine shots?! You couldn’t, y'(fuck…REALLY?!), find a different spot to fucking park you fucking asshole?!

If progress is that he was in police custody and charged with murder the next day, it’s still not enough.

I’m a white, male who owns a gun, but the combination of the stand your ground laws, the conservative psyche, and the constant threat of the impending “other” on cowards like this fuckstain and other pants wetting, pudgy males terrifies me.

Dunn, who is a gun collector, pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, hitting Jordan twice

Dunn may be a murderer and a pants-pissing racist coward, but Mr. “Gun collector” also can’t shoot for shit. Eight or nine shots at a guy sitting in a car in the next parking space, and he only hits him twice? He’s lucky he didn’t hit people on the next block over.

While the snark reflex wants to make a crack about Skittles and iced tea, all I can think of is when will the next gun nut find objection to me or someone I know and feel compelled to blast away. Jordan’s life was taken away from him, his family, and the rest of us that now can never know him by someone with a weapon that gave him god-like powers to determine who lives and who dies. Today’s victim was Jordan, but the chances of this happening to any of us seem to be increasing by the day. The cynicism of “Make My Day” legislation seems to lend credibility to WTF shootings of everyday civilians.

Don’t forget, “an armed society is a polite society.” Or one that lives in constant fear.

One of my good friends once quoted that to me a few months after my arrival in Arizona. I thought for a second and replied, “I guess that’s why there are so many movies Hollywood made out West here, a specific genre of movie about how ‘polite’ society was way back when, when everyone wore a six-shooter on their hip.”

“Once all the facts are out, it will be clear Mr. Dunn acted responsibly, and as any responsible firearm owner would have acted under these same circumstances,” said Lemonidis(the guys lawyer).

It’ll be no doubt fascinating to explore what constitutes irresponsible gunplay, engaged in by only a limited number of firearm owners in Florida. Semi-automatic fire in a crowded setting if one is startled by overhearing a foreign word? In or out?

Does it ever occur to these assholes that maybe they should avoid trouble? Or do they think the gun makes them invincible and always right?

I think the goal is to go around looking for trouble, secure in the knowledge that being heavily armed means that the trouble is likely to go badly for the other guy if he talks back. After all, didn’t Jesus say that might makes right?

Also, too, let’s head off a few of the most common shitposts that haunt the comments in these situations:
“Racist librul media won’t tell the real story!”
“You don’t have all the facts!”
“MENTALLY ILL!”
“You’re all just trying to take my guns away!”
“Secret gummint thugs did it!”

There, now the usual suspects won’t have to waste their worthless time.

This is what they want. When they say “take my country back” they want to murder people.

And fuck all this “well stand your ground doesn’t apply here” Fuck that. Stand Your Ground is incitement to murderous idiots to shoot people. The state of Florida puts a loophole (I was being threatened! I swear!) that fucking big on murder then logical people will assume that the state of Florida wants people to get murdered. Assholes.

But what happens if one of these responsible firearm owners feels threatened by a pregnant girl? Can he be hauled into court for killing the fetus but not its transport? Legally, isn’t that theoretically possible in certain jurisdictions?

@Mandalay:
Look at conservative policies using the model of an abusive narcissist. They match perfectly. Yes, they want a law that says that if they get mad and shoot someone, they can claim it was justified. They want to feel like they’re free to wield that power, they want others to feel threatened by it, and mostly they want to know they can do whatever they want, including hurt others, because they’re special. That the law might be used against them they can’t grasp. They just want a law that expresses their feelings. Being able to kill someone for looking at them funny does so.

Hey, c’mon you librlz– he ASKED the Ni-black to turn the music down, and the young buck din’t. So of course he shot him. What else could he have done? You PC libs just don’t understand Our Traditions…. some people just don’t know their place.
(Still– this native Fla lib is finally going to get his concealed carry permit, since it’s so damn easy, and everyone else down here seems to have one.
After that, I guess I’ll have to buy a gun, too.)

“Jordan Davis, 17, and some other teens were sitting in a SUV in a parking lot when Dunn parked next to them and asked the youths to turn down their music.
Jordan Davis and Dunn argued over the music, then Dunn, who is a gun collector, pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, hitting Jordan twice, reports the Orlando Sentinel.”

Where the hell does race anywhere involve itself in this story outside of ABL injecting it? Seriously where is the racial component?

What I see here is a white dude got into it with a black dude over loud music. Was it petty? Should he have not parked next to him? should Dunn go to jail for the rest of his life? Should Davis be living and free?

To the above, all of it, yes.

But no where in the story at all do I see anything to point to that this had any racial motive what so ever. To imply racism where there is no reported evidence of it is complete bullshit and soley feeds into the rightwing meme that white people are the true victims of racism.

Implying every white on black crime is racist is like implying every black on white crime is drug or gang related. Complete bullshit.

Change the charming “collector” to the likely more accurate “hoarder” and that sentence reads a bit differently.

“Gun collector” sounds like he has an 1876 Winchester repeater hanging on the wall of his den. Collectors usually don’t carry their items around in the car with them.

I wonder if this guy is left handed. Seems like it would be really hard to shoot out of the driver’s window rightie. If you don’t get the gun outside the car you’re going to be deafened at the first shot, so loud stereos won’t bother you any more.

@MikeJ: Little do you know the danger posed by the hordes of wandering collectors throughout the nation. Possibilities of bleeding to death from papercuts from mint stamps wielded in anger — or being crushed under Star Wars figures thown in a moment of panic.

As much as I hate to say this, probably not in my lifetime and in theory that could be another 30 yrs or more. There are just too many (white) people who only have two emotions, hate and fear. And there are way too many of them with microphones urging the rest to bury any feelings other than that hate and fear. And too much conservative/evangelical screaming that reenforces nothing else. Until that is solved and people lose the idea that opportunity is a zero sum game this will not change. It may get better as the old white racists die off but there are younger people infected with this disease and they will be here for some time.
And that idea that opportunity is a zero sum game, until the current economy, schooling and job issues get better it really has become true for many of us.

“Where the hell does race anywhere involve itself in this story outside of ABL injecting it? Seriously where is the racial component?

What I see here is a white dude got into it with a black dude over loud music. Was it petty? Should he have not parked next to him? should Dunn go to jail for the rest of his life? Should Davis be living and free?

To the above, all of it, yes.

But no where in the story at all do I see anything to point to that this had any racial motive what so ever. To put that out there is complete bullshit and feeds into the rightwing meme that white people are the true victims of racism.”

Uh huh.

“Now, for the first time, we’re hearing Dunn’s side of the story, from his attorney Robin Lemonidis. She said, “They were blasting some rap music. And he said he rolled down his window, pulled up on the passenger side, and rolled down his window and asked, would you mind turning that down? And said it very politely.”

The attorney says the teenager in the front seat turned down the radio. But then she says her client heard the teens cussing at him, making threats. She says Dunn rolled down his window and said, “He said excuse me, are you talking to me?”

At that point, she says one of the teenagers told Dunn he was dead. “And that’s when the guy in the back seat raised the barrel of a shotgun over the rim of the window,” said Lemonidis. “At that point, he just snapped into self protection mode.”

Dunn’s attorney claims that’s when her client reached for a gun he had in the glove compartment of his car, loaded it, and fired. “Firing at the car, because they’re showing him a gun, and he can’t see their hands,” she said. “And he doesn’t know. They’re about to blast him in the face with a shotgun, as far as he knows.””

Yeah. RAP MUSIC! BLASTING! YOUTHS! “SAID IT VERY POLITELY!”

I don’t know you, picturesofsmith, but are you really as stupid as all that? The guy is doing everything but saying the YOUTHS threatened to rape his girlfriend. No racial component? Seriously?

What I just read could not be defended in Florida as “stand your ground”.

You’d be surprised what’s successfully defended as “Stand Your Ground” in Florida. You can go to your ex-wife’s house, confront her new boyfriend, shoot the boyfriend dead, and walk away a free man because you felt threatened when you brought a gun to your ex-wife’s house.

The couple drove off after Dunn told her he had “fired at these kids,” Schoonover said. They went to their hotel, then returned to Brevard County when they learned what had happened from local news.

Criminies. So the kids turned the music down and the girlfriend still had to be told that ‘he fired at these kids’. But what? Those were warning shots or something? If no one was killed, just injured, he wouldn’t have felt it necessary to turn himself in because he just fired but didn’t know if he hit anyone?

@Mandalay: It’s assholes like that lawyer who make tou inderstand what motivates the most awful “kill all the lawyers” jokes.

I’m more likely to forgive the daughter for her words because she’s most likely still trying to sort through the horrible thing her father did. I hope for her sake the things she is saying are motivated by some sort of denial stage and reality tearing down her father figure. If not, then she’s part of the problem, too. But right now it reminds me of friends whose dads were caught cheating (yes, not the same as murder, I know) before a divorce–always making excuses before accepting that maybe parents can be shitty people, too.

It doesn’t need to go to a jury, even — as far as I can tell (and IANAL, much less a Florida lawyer) you just need a judge to sign off on giving the defendant immunity from prosecution under Stand Your Ground.

I’m guessing the whole “leaving the scene” part is what’s actually going to count against Dunn — he should have waited for the cops to arrive like Zimmermann did. It’s going to be hard to claim that he was so in fear for his life that he only felt compelled to flee back home after he heard one of the kids he shot at had died.

@YellowJournalism:
You may be right but don’t discount that racism is not just for old white people. Many suffer with it, for it is passed down generation to generation. There is no known true antidote although many are growing out of it through exposure and finding out that all the horrible things they are told will happen to them, don’t.

@MoeLarryAndJesus: Wait a minute…he was so cared for his life he had time to load a gun as he stared down the barrel of a shotgun rather than drive or have the other person who may have been driving drive away?! Gun owners, please, how logical is this aspect of the story?

A good attorney for the state could easily tear Dunn’s story apart to get some kind of conviction. Sadly, it won’t happen. I bet the guy pleads guilty to a lesser charge (negligence or manslaughter) after trying to go for a “not guilty” on a tougher one.

@Ruckus: Oh, I believe there’s a racial component to this situation. I’m just sayin that it sounded like a little girl trying to defend her daddy. If she holds right to the story she believes instead of working through her emotions and accepting what he has done, she has some serious issues.

@SatanicPanic: You called it correctly. Fetus > woman, obviously. But Fetus < White man. Therefore this may be the only legal way to get an abortion. Pregnant women get uppity around a SYG-enthusiast white male, and they won't have to give birth to or raise a kid.

@Mnemosyne: Leaving the scene and the fact that there were witnesses to the entire event. That was the other part of the Martin case that just seemed so aggravating. Once the the police decided the story of Zimmerman was credible enough and since Martin was dead anyway, they opted to just say “well, there you have it then, who knows what happened?”

Closest real world recent example: OAS, French-Algerians, late 1950s/early 1960s. Had the bad taste to start carrying out attacks on the French mainland, killing cops and feds, and even putting a hit out on De Gaulle. GOD DAMN, did that security state leap into action.

Not thinking twice about shooting in public at black youths when you probably don’t (I’m guessing) have a record of publicly shooting white people you’ve gotten into arguments with publicly is kind of a basic notion of “racial component”.

You don’t have to in any way consciously hate black people.

You just have to choose a lot more easily to shoot them dead upon provocation than your own history indicates you have done with non-black people.

And it needs to be followed up with a known pattern of weaker application of any laws punishing such attempted murders when the victims are black and the apparent but not-alleged murderers are white.

I don’t know.

Maybe this guy has never gotten into any argument with any non-black people in his entire life, thus there were never any occasions in which a dispute could escalate into his choice to attempt to kill people in an argument.

Or, conversely, maybe he’s shot lots of non-black people in public disputes and never paid any price for it.

But I sincerely doubt the former and I suspect we might have heard about the latter by now if true.

Once again, we here in Texas (where a guy pulled a gun on a physically aggressive line cutter on Black Friday) are thankful for Florida constantly one-upping us in crazy, just as we’re thankful for Mississippi for keeping us from being last in social services and education spending.

“How many will be accused of ‘playing the race card’ by pointing out that young black men are gunned down at an alarming rate in a country that likes to pretend it is post-racial because we have a black president?”

But unfortunately often gunned down by other young Black men.

Thank goodness this time around Dunn was arrested and charged right away. I don’t see how Stand Your Ground would be relevant to this case.

@moops wrote: “We are not in Trayvon Martin land yet.” Of course we are. This seems to have happened because of the notion SOME whites have that they are in authority to police black people.
“Are you supposed to be here?!” “Turn down your music!”

“At that point, she says one of the teenagers told Dunn he was dead. “And that’s when the guy in the back seat raised the barrel of a shotgun over the rim of the window,” said Lemonidis. “At that point, he just snapped into self protection mode.”
Dunn’s attorney claims that’s when her client reached for a gun he had in the glove compartment of his car, loaded it, and fired. “Firing at the car, because they’re showing him a gun, and he can’t see their hands,” she said. “And he doesn’t know. They’re about to blast him in the face with a shotgun, as far as he knows.””

He has a presumably loaded gun already pointed at him and he takes the time to reach across the car, LOAD AN UNLOADED GUN and then open fire? His head could have been blown off twice during that sequence of events. I carry a loaded gun on my hip and my first response would be to throw it in reverse and get into a better defensive position, especially if I needed a couple of seconds to retrieve and load the gun. I call bullshit on that, times eleventy. Either he doesn’t have the correct concealed carry authorization and is lying about carrying the gun unloaded, or his wife loaded/made ready and handed it to him and he is trying to leave her out of it, or it happened as he said with his gun but he never saw or thought he saw a gun so had time to do all that without taking evasive maneuvers because he didn’t feel as threatened as he says.

I will bet also that he was intoxicated enough to be concerned about DUI, and left the scene because of that. Even if he turned himself in later, they would not be able to prove the amount of alcohol in his system, which also conveniently removes his impaired state from the equation for the stand your ground stuff.

As for ending up strapped to a gurney, not a chance. Not even if he killed multiple occupants of the other vehicle.

This is a black man who shot and killed a white male who was in his back yard threatening first his teenage son, then himself, who was armed with a knife. Georgia has both “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws and yet this guy was charged, tried, found guilty and is serving time in prison. If the races were reversed and the case had somehow ended up this way (ha ha) he would be an NRA martyr and talking point and everyone would know his name as well as they know the names of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. The only reason the story has gotten any publicity is because of the Trayvon Martin case and the startling contrast with it. Before that I hadn’t even heard about it and I live in the same area. It is a travesty that this man is in prison yet there isn’t a peep of 2nd amendment activist outrage. Grrrrr.

I am to believe there are parking lot security cameras at this store? Also, it’s a convenience store? Why are you worried about the volume of someone’s car stereo if you’re only going to be there for 5/10 min. tops? Also, fucking windows. How do they work?

@ruemara: Speaking of white on white crime, there was a “castle doctrine” incident on turkey day involving a 64 year old male gun enthusiast who killed two teenaged intruders in his home in Minnesota. Dude was cool to defend his home, but once he had them down, he kept firing multiple times. The teenager boy, once down from a shotgun blast, then got his head blown off by a second close range shot. While the female, stunned by the shotgun which then jammed, was finnished off by multiple shots from a handgun dude just happened to have for back up. Dude then waited a day to call cops because he didn’t want to interrupt their holiday. Sweet.

Okay, so do these kids become the faces of a new gun control movement in a way that Trayvon and countless other Black kids could not?

Who will point out that black kids need to act a certain way (and their parents should give them a good talking-to about it) in order to avoid being gunned down by trigger-happy lunatics?

Some years back there was an editorial in the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) written by an Afro-American woman. Her son was at that time maybe 5 or 6. She wrote that she would have to, in a sense, break his spirit. For instance, she said that she would teach him that, while in a store, to keep his hands in his pockets at all times unless he was selecting something that he actually intended to buy. And to be very sure to keep the item he intended to buy very visible. I don’t remember what else she planned to teach him, but all of it was about actions which would not be assumed suspicious if done by white men (or white women).

I have seen that line parodied and referenced in innumerable right wing rants. Its unbelievable how that stuck in their minds as the greatest sin associated with the killing of T. Martin–they are so sure that everyone is as outraged as they are that the President said it that it appears elliptically and as a kind of touchstone in rants about other things.

I saw that. I doubt that it is going to have any effect. People are used to crazy and the people interviewed in the first article I saw are already clearly making excuses for his “tension.” Plus, although those were both white kids, and cousins, and cute as little white puppy buttons, there is something incredibly weird about how they ended up in his basement and unless its proven somehow that he lured them in to shoot them I think public opinion is going to wind up with a shrug and a very hostile to teens “kids these days” attitude. People are racist, sure, but they are also extremely hostile to teenagers in general.

This just makes me sick. I saw a blurb of this on the news last night; I live in Jacksonville. If I hear anything, I’ll throw it out.

Hanging around here turned me away from being pro death penalty, but sometimes it’s hard to maintain that stance. These fucking sick motherfuckers left to sober up and get their story straight and it’s no surprise that he felt “threatened”. Fuck these laws and fuck these people. I never wanted to get a concealed carry permit. I just don’t believe in it. I’ve always been concerned about getting ym family to safety rather than get my chuck Norris on, but maybe I will get one now. As a liberal in Florida, maybe I should feel more threatened than I do.

@Ash: It’s doing the whole “You libtards only care about murder if a white man kills a black person. Those people kill each other all the time and no one writes about it. You’re the real racists!” thing.

Most of us have felt us some rage at some jerk blasting our eardrums with unwanted noise aka music from some over-amped audio device, often (particularly in traffic) to the point it literally shakes all the surrounding cars. So even while recognizing that Mr. Dunn clearly crossed way over a forbidden line in hotheaded self-help and retaliaton against one of these noise-jerks by shooting Jordan Davis, let’s don’t inappropriately lump this case with the racist presumption that blacks walking about at night are criminals that motivated vigilante justice in the Trevon Martin case. If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us can at least feel a slight cord of sympathetic understanding with why Mr. Dunn was pissed off at Mr. Davis.

Instead of shooting Mr. Davis with deadly force with a projectile-firing gun, what would have been more appropriate retaliation would have been to return sonic fire by insistently blasting David Allen Coe or Hank Williams, Jr at 120 db toward Mr. Davis until his tennis shoes shook and came untied with the vibration. Now Coe and Williams, Jr. are only micrometers more tolerable, if even that, than some of the crap Mr. Davis was likely playing at tire-shaking levels, but that would at least be an appropriately-scaled (and possibly even effective) type of retaliation.

@cmorenc: yes. I suppose he could have turned up his sound system. But since the people in the car that Davis was in had already turned it down after Mr. “Are You Talking to Me” justice man asked them to, it would be strange for him to turn up his own radio in response.

The comments at the Orlando newspaper article about this incident are incredibly vile. If you want your faith in human nature shaken, go read them.

According to the story, the SUV with the kids playing music was already parked at the convenience store when Dunn pulled in. The guy is there for, what, five minutes? in and out of the store and off you go – what’s the point of even commenting on the loud music? You’re out of there in thirty seconds and the annoyance is behind you. Why get into a confrontation unless confrontation is what you’re looking for?

@AxelFoley: Yes, seriously. You’ve never been pissed off at some jackass playing shit-noise music at car-frame vibrating levels nearby?

Now as to the way Mr. Dunn responded, by reaching for his too-handy stock of firearms, that I do NOT claim I or any of us have any sympathy for. Two assholes acting like stupid jerks, one of them with firearms readily available, don’t add up to a level-headed mature, civil way of settling an issue.

@AxelFoley: Exactly. He was offended that “those people” dared to offend his eardrums with thier “thug music”, because everyone knows that all white good kids don’t blare their music that loud; only the thuggish blah ones. No fucking sympathy whatsoever. This motherfucker pulled into a stores parking lot and decided he had the moral authority to tell someone to turn down their radio. When “those people” maughed in his face, he decided to show them who’s the man. He didn’t feel threatened. He didn’t see a gun. He was partially intoxicated and offended that “those people” didn’t bow before his whiteness authority. All that other shit is what he and his girlfriend came up with after they had a day to get thier story straight.

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us can at least feel a slight cord of sympathetic understanding with why Mr. Dunn was pissed off at Mr. Davis.

Oh, really? Do you sympathize with someone who feels entitled to confront strangers at gas stations, supermarkets and convenience stores because he feels it’s his place to correct their behavior? I certainly don’t

Wrinkling your nose at what you observe and minding your own business is one thing. Deciding you’re entitled to correct their behavior is quite another thing.

@cmorenc: Dude/ Dudette, so not the same thing. Yeah, I’ve been annoyed by some asshole playing their music too loudly. I’ve even told people to turn it down, when I had the authority to do so as an NCO on a military base. But this isn’t even remotely close. As a civilian, if someone’s music is too loud, you call the motherfuckin’ cops.

According to the story, the SUV with the kids playing music was already parked at the convenience store when Dunn pulled in. The guy is there for, what, five minutes? in and out of the store and off you go – what’s the point of even commenting on the loud music?

So you have a right to be a complete asshole about playing music at ear-splitting levels in a public space, so long as you get there first? And no one else has any right to get upset with you about it?

Let’s stipulate that Mr. Dunn’s chosen response was miles beyond out of bounds. But I don’t agree with passively accepting asshole behavior that ruins everyone else’s ability to tolerably use public space, because you might upset the asshole’s fe-fes.

@Cassidy: Yes, calling the cops WOULD have been the better response, hopefully assuming the cops would have gotten round ‘tuit sooner than an hour or so from when you called. I’m ONLY challenging the wilfully obtuse presumption many seem to be indulging here that they just can’t seem to understand what could have ticked Mr. Dunn off other than being a redneck racist out to shoot him some darkies.

@cmorenc: Do you need some clothes and an old hat to go with that strawman you’re building?

Seriously, you may not agree with it, but too bad. You don’t have the authority to tell someone to turn down their radio. You can politely ask someone, or even aggressively tell someone, to turn it down and they can just as rightfully tell you to fuck off. Deciding to not be confrontational about a minor annoyance is not the same as “passively accepting”.

I’m against concealed carry. But not against guns in the home. First of all because a man (or woman’s!) home is his (or her!) castle. But also because the courts have held that the police are not obligated to protect you. Until that changes my position won’t.

He supposedly asks them, politely, to turn down the radio. They do…and THEN threaten his life? In what universe would that ever happen? No one who is going to get THAT fired up about their music is going to turn the music down.

The kids allegedly point a gun at him. He “snaps” into self-protection mode, proceeds to load his gun and fire 9 shots, and the guys with the gun pointed at him NEVER FIRE A SHOT? I mean, really?

He fires 9 shots and supposedly doesn’t know he didn’t hit anyone? Whoever said he was concerned about a DUI is pot on.

It’s not Trevon Martin. Don’t misuse a real injustice story on every tom Dick and Harry murder. the guy is an idiot. Bet her turns out to have a long record too but the lawyer claim is a desperate grasping at straws. lawyers aren’t allowed to throw up their hands and say my client is an indefensable idiot.
The cops arrested him right away and their DA didn’t tell them not to for stupid laws reasons. It’s just a murder and the process is going to take care of it. The stand your ground law is stupid & will have to be overturned but I don’t think this case is even going to get anywhere with even that stupid law.
Black men do get murdered at a higher rate. We do need to address that but I don’t see that this case reveals much about why that is. the shooter may well be racist but maybe not. He may just be generally malignant and pick fights with targets of oportunity. Wish we could get more of the type off the streets before something happens.

@gvg: You’re betting way too much on decency. There is a prevailing attitude in the “southern” part of Florida that white makes right. I would bet money that this guy would not have been more than oddly annoyed if the car he had pulled up next to had been a raised jeep blaring country music. The dirty south has real issues with young black men “stepping out of line”. There is most definitely a racial component to this and I see it on a regular basis; I live here…in Jacksonville. The passive bigotry that surrounds me is astounding. I came back here after getting out of the Army, because this was my home, but the bigotry was here when I left and it’s worse since I’ve been home.

No I honestly have never been that annoyed by anyone’s music and if you seriously find that even momentarily homicidally enraging, you need help. Seriously.

Hell I sleep during the daytime and I have a lawn fanatic neighbor whose backyard ends about a foot from my bedroom window, and he luuuuuuvs his leaf blower. And not even an hour of NNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNNnnnnnNNNNNNNN from a place I can’t remove myself from has made me want to open fire on the guy. For that matter, all my dogs who bark me awake all the time because they think they heard something? They are all still alive too.

Serial Mom is pretty funny. But it is a movie. People don’t deserve to die for being jackasses with their music.

No I honestly have never been that annoyed by anyone’s music and if you seriously find that even momentarily homicidally enraging, you need help. Seriously.

Hell I sleep during the daytime and I have a lawn fanatic neighbor whose backyard ends about a foot from my bedroom window, and he luuuuuuvs his leaf blower. And not even an hour of NNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNNnnnnnNNNNNNNN from a place I can’t remove myself from has made me want to open fire on the guy. For that matter, all my dogs who bark me awake all the time because they think they heard something? They are all still alive too.

Serial Mom is pretty funny. But it is a movie. People don’t deserve to die for being jackasses with their music.

Cassidy, do you think the bigotry is worse or do you think your sensitivity to it has increased after exposure to the wider world. I definitely feel that way about my hometown where I grew up, but I am pretty suremitmis me that has changed. After living in a multiracial, majority African American area for so long, I am much more acutely aware of the lack of brown faces around me than the presence of them, and I notice a lot more the casually bigoted things people say when they assume everyone is like minded.

When I was growing up, Jacksonville was very racially segregated, because it was so huge. The land mass that is Jacksonville/ Duval County is the largest in the country. So we had our white areas and black areas and they didn’t cross much. The white areas ran from upscale to white trash, but the only new neighborhood, of note, being built was an area called Argyle. It was predominantly white and the only people of color their were cops and firefighters who were vouched for by their white co-workers. Jump ahead 13 years later, the neighborhhod has expanded, is falling apart in some areas, and has a large influx of AA’s who took advantage of the housing boom to move thier families to the suburbs and own a home. White people are exiting as fast as possible because the area is overtaken with the blahs! It’s all thier fault the area is falling apart. Of course, the houses falling apart are new track homes, which are shit anyways, the older homes that the white folk lived in, and homeowners of all races saying fuck it to the bank and abandoning the houses. But it’s all the blah’s fault.

Also, when we were getting the Jaguars way back when, one of the concerns brought up to city council, no bullshit, was the influx of black men with money moving into the upscale, gated communities. That gobsmacked me back then even.

The bigotry has always been here, but I think it’s become a lot less passive because of the desegregation og the neighborhoods. Between resentment, jealousy, and just having to live next to someone who doesn’t listen to the same music you do, the bigotry has gotten uglier.

I can see it working in Florida. Crazy old white people are scared of young people, and young BLACK people are notorious for walking around unarmed and playing loud music – you’d be crazy NOT to be scared of that…

Yes, seriously. You’ve never been pissed off at some jackass playing shit-noise music at car-frame vibrating levels nearby?

I’m quite pissed by the shit selection of music that follows me around on my trips to the grocery store. Never occurred to me to bust a cap in the manager. And making the rounds at the grocery store takes 30 min, not 3 minutes, so I’m under a lot more stress.

Do they put angel dust in the water down there, or something? I’d just like to point out for posterity that Jax is also where that person lives who decided to rip off one of my essays wholesale and post it on his community blog like it was his own original content, so apparently assholes grow thick on the ground around there.

@Violet: Dude was returning to his motel after his son’s wedding. He parked next to the red SUV, but apparently felt so very threatened that he stayed in his vehicle and sent his girlfriend into the convenience store to buy a bottle of wine to take back to the motel.

His lawyer says alcohol was definitely not a factor. Yeah.

He’s been charged with second degree murder, according to the Jacksonville Times-Union.

Americans want their guns, then they whine and moan when shit like this happens. What the hell do you expect when any tom, dick n harry is allowed to own and/or carry a gun?

Then you top it off with genius laws like “Stand your ground”. Thankfully such idiot laws isn’t nationwide. There will never will be real change because this is the society Americans choose to have. You can’t have it both ways. You either want people running around with guns or you don’t. Most people are too fucking stupid or irresponsible to be behind the wheel of an automobile (proof here is the number of texters or eaters or phone yappers), let alone carry weapons whos sole purpose is to kill.

Look on the bright side, making the caskets to bury the tens of thousands of gunned down Americans every year because of your lame-ass gun laws creates jobs and is good for the economy.

@cmorenc: I’m getting increasingly cranky about shit as I rapidly age, so yeah, I’ve been annoyed by the loud bass coming from cars driving by my house that sits 500 feet off the road. But not nearly as frequently as I’m annoyed by the sound of after market pipes on Harleys (when the factory pipes are already too loud) that are mostly ridden by old grey haired white guys (since kids are unable to afford them). I yell at them to be quiet, but they never listen (like the kids did when they turned their music down low enough for the shooter to hear the alleged threat). That’s why I’ve taken to sitting on my front porch with a loaded 308. Be polite or die, motherfuckers.

If only there were a middle ground. I guess we have to settle for summarily executing people for creating a nuisance.

I’ve felt many times that people who unload fifty items in the express lane at the grocery should be taken out and maimed, let alone people whose mobile music threatens to shake out the fillings in my teeth. But somehow I’ve managed to resist the impulse, difficult though it might be. This guy couldn’t put up with someone’s music for five minutes, if if it’s sucky music?

Wonder what he’d have done if it was a bunch of white kids playing Eminem? Who, btw, would have been equally inclined to tell him to go fuck himself, if not more so.

Since when is a gas station parking lot a public place? You tell the clerk you aren’t going to frequent their business if they don’t do anything about people loitering in their parking lot, and then you don’t frequent their business. Or, since you don’t even live in that area, you just get your fucking wine and go on your way.

I moved because my white neighbor’s kids and their buddies drove with their boom stereos blaring all the time and I couldn’t get the cops to do much of anything (even after contacting the LA County district supervisor – they were cop connected themselves – fire department I think). In my case alone (not to be transferred to anyone’s else circumatances), I would be doing my happy dance if I heard this is what happened to the neighbor’s kids. Sorry. That’s just me. I am also a volunteer first responder (just means I’ve had Red Cross first aid training) and if I came upon a car accident with either fart tubes (modified noisy exhaust) or a boom stereo thumping, I keep thinking I’d let them bleed out (no volunteer is required to render assistance).

I also do not grieve when I hear about taggers dying from some snafu in their nightly appointed rounds.

However, in this circumstance, It appears Mr. Dunn is looking to cover his butt after inserting himself foolishly into a pissing contest. I have asked others to “turn it down” and been threatened because of it, but the “threats” were just more posturing. The neighbor’s kids have vandalized my property, but without proof, you just gotta take your lumps. Sad but true.

@YellowJournalism: Exactly, If you are really afraid of gang activity, then you move to a place of safety and call the police. Methinks there was a ticking V1agra or C1alis clock involved in addition to the alcohol.

In my case alone (not to be transferred to anyone’s else circumatances), I would be doing my happy dance if I heard this is what happened to the neighbor’s kids. Sorry. That’s just me

No, you’re not sorry. Yes, you are just you, with your complicated grudge you feel compelled to share in a comment thread about an incident that’s only tangentially related to said complicated grudge, and which you acknowledge has nothing to do with anything that anyone here might be discussing. Plus — shift-work taggers dying in snafus!

Yay, you.

Maybe think about why you — and you alone — are making the link between the two incidents?

@cmorenc: I hate loud music as much as the next middle-aged white woman, but a convenience sort isn’t “public space,” it’s most definitely “private property” (if not, then what is?)and the only authority that has the right to tell people to turn their music down is the owner or his agent. Or the cops, if a noise ordinance is being violated.

Public space is the street, or the front lawn at city hall, or a sidewalk, or a State of Tennessee rest stop by the side of I-40. Stores and their parking lots are private property. Small distinction,

I have to disagree, the cases are profoundly similar. You have a young African American male being shot by a white person because the shooter fears young African American males, no matter how they then “dress it up.” When you shoot a kid and say that you “saw a gun” or that he “jumped you” after you followed him and harassed him for simply walking on the sidewalk, the following excuses you make are just that.

We in America have a problem. It should amaze the racists that those that they denigrate the most viciously and treat the worst have so far not responded in kind to the treatment that they have received. Yes, there is crime, including black on black crime, but young African Americans are not, so far, shooting first in these situations. Could they get away with claiming “stand your ground” in Florida, even when the facts are clearly on their side? Probably not — but so far they have been the calm and level headed ones, and European American racists have been the ones that are out of control.

I by the way am a male of European American descent (a white guy). My family came here as grantees of the Duke of York after the War With the Dutch and have been here ever since. I am also a liberal, and in the spirit of full disclosure, have a mixed race teenage son who is my entire world. By happenstance (and strong English genes I guess) he can easily pass for “White” – but I still worry about him and I’m very glad that we don’t live in the South.

I have to disagree, the cases are profoundly similar. You have a young African American male being shot by a white person because the shooter fears young African American males, no matter how they then “dress it up.” When you shoot a kid and say that you “saw a gun” or that he “jumped you” after you followed him and harassed him for simply walking on the sidewalk, the following excuses you make are just that.

We in America have a problem. It should amaze the racists that those that they denigrate the most viciously and treat the worst have so far not responded in kind to the treatment that they have received. Yes, there is crime, including black on black crime, but young African Americans are not, so far, shooting first in these situations. Could they get away with claiming “stand your ground” in Florida, even when the facts are clearly on their side? Probably not — but so far they have been the calm and level headed ones, and European American racists have been the ones that are out of control.

I by the way am a male of European American descent (a white guy). My family came here as grantees of the Duke of York after the War With the Dutch and have been here ever since. I am also a liberal, and in the spirit of full disclosure, have a mixed race teenage son who is my entire world. By happenstance (and strong English genes I guess) he can easily pass for “White” – but I still worry about him and I’m very glad that we don’t live in the South.

@jeff: nothing is different about the travon martin case. Travon did not threaten Zimmerman. He ran from Zimmerman. The need to get rid of the stand your ground law because people will start using that same law to get away with murder just like Zimmerman did!!!!

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